Russia and China finally caught on. It is amazing that the governments of the two countries that Washington regards as "threats" were so tolerant of foreign-financed NGOs for so long.

Americans need to understand that the biggest threat to them resides entirely in the crazed neoconservative ideology of Washington’s hegemony over the world and over the American people, Paul Craig Roberts believes.

It took two decades for Russia and China to understand that “pro-democracy” and “human rights” organizations operating within their countries were subversive organizations funded by the US Department of State and a collection of private American foundations organized by Washington. The real purpose of these non-governmental organizations (NGOs) is to advance Washington’s hegemony by destabilizing the two countries capable of resisting US hegemony.

Over the years, we have repeatedly poked fun at the transformation of Venezuela into a "socialist utopia" - an economy in a state of terminal collapse, where the destruction of the currency (one black market Bolivar is now worth 107 times less than the official currency's exchange rate) and the resulting hyperinflation is only matched be barren wasteland that local stores have transformed into now that conventional supply chains are irreparably broken.

Whenever you stay in any hotel in Latin America, which does not “play” RT, PressTV, CCTV, TeleSUR, be a pest; demand! Nag, nag, and nag!

Mighty new television networks based in South America, Russia, China and Iran are locked in what could only be described as an epic battle against the omnipresent Western propaganda and indoctrination networks.Their programs can be seen all over the globe, and they have been dramatically changing the lives of millions in Africa, Latin America and the Middle East, even in some hubs of the Empire itself, like New York and London.

The search for 43 college students who vanished in the southern Mexican state of Guerrero 10 months ago has turned up at least 60 clandestine graves and 129 bodies, the Associated Press revealed Monday.

The ongoing border dispute between the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela and its eastern neighbor Guyana is no simple disagreement over an arbitrary line on a map. Actually, it is a conflict of significant political and economic dimensions, one which will have deep and far-reaching geopolitical implications in the near and long term.

What we are witnessing is the rise of a new wave of the most dangerous arms race with totally unpredictable consequences.

At the moment it is unrealistic to expect a speedy improvement in US – Russia relations. This is to be regretted, but it is a fact: these relations have reached perhaps the lowest point and are even worse than during Soviet times – a really disturbing development.

The general public is aware that both nations are facing off on the political, economic, and informational fronts. However, they also confront each other in yet another area which is only followed by a narrow circle of experts, though it bears directly on the most important security issues facing the whole planet.

The reference is, of course, to major arms control treaties. These took many years and tremendous efforts to negotiate, and yet they now dissolve one after another.

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has been ordered by a federal appeals court to release nearly 10,000 records to a university research group investigating Chiquita Brands International’s support of a terrorist group in Colombia. The National Security Archive, based at The George Washington University in Washington, DC, had to sue to get the documents, which were requested under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). It took its case to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, which directed the SEC to release 9,257 pages of records produced by Chiquita related to the AUC payments.

I urge anyone who reads this to watch the video above called All Wars Are Bankers Wars that will reinforce my stance and opinion into a more digestible understanding of the how and why and greed and inhumanity, as there is far more going on here than I can put into this already over lengthy op-ed and I will now explain why and how we keep the wars going and in doing so make a small cartel of banksters richer… for here is the crux of it all and HERE is an example of exactly how I understand what happens…

There is a madness in how the mainstream U.S. media presents the world to the American people, a delusional perspective that arguably creates an existential threat to humanity’s survival. We have seen this pattern in the biased depiction of the Ukraine crisis and now in how Official Washington is framing the debate over the Iranian nuclear agreement.

In this American land of make-believe, Iran is assailed as the chief instigator of instability in the Middle East. Yet, any sane and informed person would dispute that assessment, noting the far greater contributions made by Israel, Saudi Arabia and, indeed, the United States.

The larger issue for the American people is what to do with this insane political-media system that dominates Official Washington. Either these powers-that-be are detached from reality or they are deceitful propagandists who think they can manipulate us with lies and distortions.

I have sometimes thought that if wars could be shown in slow-motion, we could put an end to this barbarism that gives the lie to all claims of “civilization” and “humanity.”

GAZA WRITES BACK is one of those very rare books that depicts war in slow motion.

The 23 stories here, written by 15 young authors (from late teens to early 30s, all but three female) were compiled to commemorate the 5-year anniversary of “Operation Cast Lead”—the name Israel gave to its 2008-2009 campaign to once more (but not finally) “mow the lawn” in Occupied Palestine—mostly, in this case, in Gaza.

It is a book that vivifies and personalizes the horrors, but also adumbrates the gnawing losses, the indelible memories.

The Amazon rainforest is an incredible place. Its plant ecosystem stores 17% of the world’s carbon which helps regulate the earth’s temperature. The region is often referred to as “the lungs of the earth” as it produces substantial amounts of oxygen, supporting countless lifeforms. Spanning a huge chunk of South America, it is home to a staggering number of animal and plant species, with 427 mammals and 40,000 plant species discovered to date, and that’s just scratching the surface. And yet this indispensable region of planet earth is under continued threat.

The ambassador was quoted in several media outlets as telling a Palestine Peace Conference in Santiago that, "A group of intellectuals and financial advisers, mostly non-Jewish Europeans, decided to establish the Zionist movement with one aim: the establishment of a national home for the Jewish people. However, the truth of the matter was that it was meant to facilitate Jewish plans to dominate the entire world."

Congratulations! – With a resounding “OXI” = “No” – with 61% the Greek rejected the troika imposed austerity. They joined a majority of economists worldwide, including from the IMF, who also know that austerity doesn’t help recovery – and certainly doesn’t wipe out debt, the noose around a country’s neck.

But – what does the decisive no-vote mean for the 39% yes-voters? – Do they want more of austerity? – Hardly. Or were they manipulated with fear-mongering by the mostly privately owned western media, which also dominate Greece?– Blackmailed by the threats of Brussels? – Were they afraid of what’s next? – Western presstitute media propaganda for a “yes” vote, spiked with fear, threats and purposeful confusion was horrendous.

An Argentinian programmer who was trying to do a good thing in exposing severe vulnerabilities in the country's e-voting system was rewarded for his actions -- with a police raid on his home. According to Argentinian news outlet La Nación, Joaquín Sorianello informed MSA, the company than makes the Vot.ar e-voting system, that the SSL certificates used by the system to encrypt transmissions between the voting stations and the central election office could be easily downloaded, allowing for potential voting fraud (or just a good old-fashioned DDOS attack).

A federal judge in Argentina has issued an order to seize the assets of five foreign companies exploring oil in waters off the disputed Malvinas islands, also known as the Falklands to the British.

Judge Lilian Herraez, based in the Tierra del Fuego region of southern Argentina, ordered on Saturday the freeze of USD 156 million and other assets such as ships, calling on the oil firms to halt their drilling activities around the islands.

The real issue holding things up is whether the Americans have the "political will" to make that leap, to agree in writing to its obligations (without 100 caveats) and the courage to face their sprawling bureaucracy whose bread-and-butter is the 'sanctions industry' and the 'Iranian enemy.' says Sharmine Narwani

It’s D-Day in Vienna, and the parties sitting across the negotiating table still haven’t ironed out terms to settle a 12-year standoff over Iran’s nuclear program. Expect this deadline to be missed. And prepare for a lot of hot air to fill its space.

The “hot air” is calculated narrative-spin from a range of players that seek to 1) scuttle a deal, 2) increase pressure/create leverage at the negotiating table, or 3) frame an upcoming agreement in language favorable to one side.

Please forgive my cynicism and negative connotations in this letter but I find it is often necessary to infuse the negativity to emit action, anger and resolution.

Why do You allow the criminal, corporate media to continuously and incessantly lie to its citizens and not only misrepresent the facts but often fabricate stories in order to inflate the severity of the fiction?

Mr. Tsipras lets it be known that if the Greek vote ‘yes’ – for the austerity program, he may resign – that might bring the hegemon’s desired ‘regime change’.

Greece is a moving target. A new bail-out package in the wings? Being negotiated as these lines are going to print? An act of desperation? – Confusing for sure – for the electorate, for observers – but especially for the suffering every-day Greek. Almost hour by hour things are changing.

A last-minute, last ditch negotiation with Brussels for a new bail-out program has apparently been initiated by Athens for two years. No amount has been mentioned – let alone the austerities that Greece would have to accept – or the troika.

Puerto Rico signaled Monday that bankruptcy would be a way to restructure its burdensome debt, even while U.S. official say there will be no bail out for the Caribbean island.

Puerto Rican governor Alejandro Garcia Padilla called for a moratorium that would postpone debt payments for years, allowing the country to catch up on payments while also investing at home in key areas like job creation. He also called for the U.S. to allow the country to file for bankruptcy to enabled debt restructuring.

What the Greek people can turn to is a realistic and altogether more democratic and humane option – of demanding their country slash its monstrous military spend.

Decades of exorbitant military spending account for Greece’s present downfall under an Olympian-sized debt. European governments and news media portray the problem of Greece’s financial woes as public spending profligacy.

Pope Francis has made an unexpected request for his upcoming trip to Bolivia – he wants to chew coca leaves, the natural source of cocaine, according to a government official. Bolivia says it will “await the Holy Father” with the "sacred" leaves.

Argentina has ordered the seizure of assets belonging to foreign drilling companies operating in the vicinity of Falklands / Malvinas Islands, saying they have failed to obtain the necessary permissions from Buenos Aires to conduct exploration.

A federal judge in Tierra del Fuego, Lilian Herraez, has ordered authorities to seize the assets of five companies drilling for oil in the Falklands worth $156 mn. The measure was ordered following a request of a prosecutor from the Office of Economic Crime and Money Laundering (PROCELAC).

According to the prosecution, the order to seize assets was issued for “illegal activities of exploration, search and eventual extraction of hydrocarbons in proximity to the Falkland Islands” because the companies in question failed to obtain permits issued by “the competent authority in Argentina.”

They inspired the entire Planet. They brought hope to every corner of our scarred Earth. But now they are themselves in need of our support.

All of revolutionary Latin America is “screaming”.

As I described in two of my recent books, “Exposing Lies Of The Empire” and “Fighting Against Western Imperialism”, the Empire is using similar destabilization strategy against all countries that are resisting its deadly embrace.

They inspired the entire Planet. They brought hope to every corner of our scarred Earth. But now they are themselves in need of our support.

If left alone, they would thrive for decades and centuries. But the Empire is once again on the offensive. It is shaking with fury. It is ready to invade, to smash, burn to ashes all the hopes, all that which had been achieved.

Don’t believe in the “common wisdom” which proclaims that the rulers of the world simply “closed their eyes” more than a decade ago; that George W. Bush was “too busy” ravishing the Middle East, therefore “allowing” most of the Latin American countries to “sneak away” from the iron grip of the Empire.

The Disconnect: For consumers, bananas are a delicious and nutritious start to the day, a healthy snack and a fixture in our fruit bowls. For millions of residents in the banana lands, the production of bananas means social upheaval, violence and pesticide poisoning. Banana Land explores the origins of these disparate realities, and opens the conversation on how workers, producers and consumers can address this disconnect.

In a twisted attempt to show battlefield success against FARC rebels, the Colombian military killed hundreds, possibly thousands, of civilians between 2002 and 2008, falsely depicting them as slain combatants, according to a new report by Human Rights Watch.

The prove-a-negative trap is the Big Lie technique of Nazi propagandist Josef Goebbels: there is no substance to the allegations and there is no obligation to present evidence to verify, thanks to the dutiful and unquestioning nature of Western corporate “journalism”.

The United States and its Western allies are trying to ensnare Russia in an audacious disinformation trap over the Ukraine conflict. That trap involves imposing an insoluble conundrum on Vladimir Putin’s government, which we might call “prove a negative”. It is a familiar conceptual device that Washington has used elsewhere, against Iraq and Iran for example, in order to pursue what are otherwise illegitimate geopolitical aims.Russia is being held up as the guilty party that is undermining the shaky Minsk ceasefire; and Western economic sanctions are being extended “until Russia implements the ceasefire”.

The Yemen peace talks in the Swiss city of Geneva have collapsed, with the foreign minister of the government-in-exile blaming the Houthi representatives of refusing to meet with them.
Foreign Minister Riad Yassin told Al Jazeera on Friday that his delegation plans to leave the negotiations and return to Saudi Arabia on Saturday.
"Until this time we have not achieved anything. Unfortunately, still the Houthis have not complied with anything," Yassin told Al Jazeera's Hashem Ahelbarra.
"There is no progress for the time being. We did not receive any proposal."
Yassin said that Houthi representatives have even refused to leave their hotel in Geneva.
Following the collapse of talks, Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed, UN special envoy on Yemen, said a ceasefire should come before any new round of negotiations can start.
He vowed to "redouble effort" to reach a ceasefire, and held hope that an agreement can be achieved "pretty soon."

Webmaster's Commentary:

These talks were engineered to fail.

Watch the Saudi military, enabled by US military expertise, ramp up the pressure tremendously on Yemen in the coming weeks, killing scores of innocent civilians in the process.

And let's call it what it is, shall we?!?

A genocidal, collective punishment of the Yemenite people, for wanting to kick out an oppressive, US-backed dictator. Folks, this is a war crime!!

Americans have to eventually share their preeminent position with China.”

As intellectual acumen and cross-cultural expertise go, it would be hopeless to expect self-described “Don’t Do Stupid Stuff” Obama administration foreign policy advisers — as well as Pentagon functionaries/hacks — to understand the complexities of China.

For instance, they would be incapable of evaluating all the myriad ramifications included in Professor Alfred McCoy’s masterful deconstruction of US-China geopolitics.

“The US cannot stop China’s rise. It just has to live with a bigger China, which will be completely novel for the US, as no country has ever been big enough to challenge its position. China will be able to do so in 20 to 30 years.” (Lee said that at the Future China Global Forum in Singapore, in 2011. Under Xi, China is already challenging the U.S.’s position.)

Greece has been in the headlines of the world’s financial press for the past five months, as a newly elected leftist party, ‘Syriza’, which ostensibly opposes so-called ‘austerity measures’, faces off against the “Troika” (International Monetary Fund, the European Commission and European Central Bank).

Early on, the Syriza leadership, headed by Alexis Tsipras, adopted several strategic positions with fatal consequences – in terms of implementing their electoral promises to raise living standards, end vassalage to the ‘Troika’ and pursue an independent foreign policy.

We will proceed by outlining the initial systemic failures of Syriza and the subsequent concessions further eroding Greek living standards and deepening Greece’s role as an active collaborator of US and Israeli imperialism.

European countries should free themselves from US political dominance and the dictates of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Bolivian President Evo Morales told RT.

In his interview with RT’s Spanish-language channel in Brussels, Morales said he is “very sorry that, instead of freeing themselves from the shackles of the North American Empire, some countries continue to live in its submission.”

Considerable attention has been devoted to the millions of dollars Bill and Hillary Clinton have received from wealthy individuals and corporations for their foundation and for themselves.

Hillary Clinton’s greatest billionaire backer has been Haim Saban, a dual United States-Israel citizen and hardline supporter of Israel, who has openly commented, “I’m a one-issue guy, and my issue is Israel.”

It would not be beyond the realm of possibility that those who handed over tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Clinton Foundation (some of which took place while Hillary was Secretary of State) or to the couple themselves for speaker fees expected favors in return.

Americans are already dispossessed of their livelihoods and careers and their pensions are next. Wherever we look, the fate of populations under Western influence are the same. The Ukrainians are exploited, the Greeks, the British, the Americans.

Apologists for exploitation claim that the rich are richer because they are smarter. But the stupidity of the rich is everywhere visible. The greedy fools have destroyed their domestic US market. Really, how stupid can you be? How do Americans buy when they are forced by offshoring out of well paid manufacturing and software engineering jobs into being waitresses, bartenders, retail clerks and part-time Walmart workers in order that corporate bottom lines improve? Who buys the stuff that sustains the profits? Not Americans who no longer have the incomes to do so.

Thousands of Nicaraguans have held a protest against the planned construction of a canal linking the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. The $50bn (£32bn) scheme, being built by a Chinese firm, will be longer, deeper and wider than the Panama Canal. But the demonstrators fear it will have huge environmental costs and force thousands off their land.

South America’s first bitcoin exchange is assaulted with a one ton FIAT:

On June 9 at 5:02 AM the driver aimed his car between large support columns then bailed out before impact at Cofres Bitcoin, located at Plaza Independencia 823 in Montevideo, Uruguay. The driver was not under the influence. He was detained by police.

Since April 2014, Cofres Bitcoin has served as a bitcoin transaction point and safe deposit box facility. The boxes were not damaged nor was anything stolen.

The location has become well known for its open, public letters about 911 truth directed at the president of Uruguay. Uruguay has given refuge to a number of Guantanamo prisoners, who were never charged with a crime.

Where is CNN? Why isn’t this considered an act of Terrorism? Is it only t-t-t-terrorism when certain classes of people are the victims and when it suits the narrative of certain interest groups and their agenda?

US soldiers and military contractors sexually abused more than 54 children in Colombia between 2003 and 2007, according to a recently released historic document on the country’s conflict. The suspects have allegedly not been prosecuted due to immunity clauses in bilateral agreements.

Colombian officials are blaming rebels for an attack on the country's energy infrastructure that left hundreds of thousands of people without power.

President Juan Manuel Santos said Thursday that the guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia had blown up an energy pylon and blacked out much of the southern region of Caqueta Wednesday night.

Webmaster's Commentary:

Sounds better than admitting Columbia's electrical system has been allowed to deteriorate to junk.

The Western media is curiously ignoring the month-long Guatemalan Revolution that’s already forced many ministers to resign and is now threatening to take down the President.

Webmaster's Commentary:

The US covertly overthrew Guatemala's elected government in 1954, ousting President Jacobo Arbenz, and installing the first in a long line of dictators that have ruled Guatemala since. This led to a civil war that ran from 1960 to 1996, with massive atrocities committed by the US-backed military dictatorship. This may be another case of a people trying to kick out a US puppet government, which is why the corporate media will ignore it.

The United States has a strategy. A multi-phased plan has been worked out for Venezuela with the help of foreign experts. Who will bring it into life? – The plan is to be carried out by special laboratories working on fourth generation warfare, including, first of all, the US Defense Department, the Central Intelligence Agency and other American intelligence agencies, as well as national and foreign universities, advertisement agencies, Colombian paramilitary groups, right wing and ultra-right parties, national and foreign media outlets.

Former Spanish Prime Minister Felipe Gonzalez arrived in Caracas on Sunday in an alleged bid to help with the legal defence of jailed opposition leaders Leopoldo Lopez, Daniel Ceballos and Antonio Ledezma.

His controversial visit has sparked a negative backlash from the country’s institutions and citizens, who have branded it as an unacceptable interference into Venezuela’s national affairs, as well as a stunt for the international media. Venezuelans gathered in public squares across Venezuela on Sunday to publicly reject the former PM’s presence.

The US strategy of war through negotiations has mixed results. Where it confronts a burgeoning world power, such as China, it has failed. With a weak, disarmed state like Libya, it succeeded beyond its wildest dreams (or nightmares). With “middle level powers” like Cuba and Iran, it has secured political concessions but has not yet eroded the security and defense capabilities of the governments. In the case of Colombia, Washington is deeply embedded in the regime and has openly embraced a naked military solution.

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro concluded an agreement with Russia's state-owned Rosneft that will see an additional $14 billion in investment in the South American country's oil and gas industry over the coming years.

Two years ago, a news article about Venezuela in the Christian Science Monitor reported that “Globovisión, widely considered to be the last standing television station to aggressively criticize the Chávez regime, was sold last month to a group of businessmen believed to be friendly with the government.” It is only one sentence in one news article, but in a few ways it reveals that the western media has spent well over a decade parroting anything said by the Venezuelan opposition which is funded and staunchly backed by the US government. For one thing, Andrew Rosati, the reporter I quoted, refers to Venezuela’s democratically elected government as a “regime”. That alone indicates that coverage of the Venezuelan government has been almost one hundred percent negative. Would any reporter refer to “the Obama regime”, and would it ever get past an editor? The same applies to US allies. Good luck finding a western reporter who would dare call Israel’s government a “regime” in a news article.

The different approaches to the world economic and financial crisis followed by Latin America and Europe can, respectively, be characterized by spending out of trouble, fostering social programs and stimulating the economy downstream and on the other hand, stifling the economy with cuts. Let us take a look at the Brazilian example.
The following text is written by economist Welinton dos Santos, contributor to the Portuguese version of Pravda.Ru. In his piece, Welinton dos Santos tells us about the myriad of social programs implemented by the Brazilian government under the Partido dos Trabalhadores Presidents Lula and now, Dilma.

As it stands, what we do know is that 2015 will be a hair-raising year in myriad aspects... we all still remain under the sign of a fearful, dangerous, rampantly irrational Empire of Chaos.

Russia could outmaneuver Western financial markets by cutting them off from its wealth of oil and natural gas. The markets would inevitably collapse – uncontrolled chaos for the Empire of Chaos (or “controlled chaos”, in Putin’s own words).

In a different vein of the “soft beds of the East” seducing Marcus Aurelius, the silky splendors of chic Beijing offer a glimpse of an extremely self-assured emerging power. After all, Europe is nothing but a catalogue of multiple sclerosis and Japan is under its sixth recession in 20 years.

“There’s a general recognition growing that the driving force for this war is the utter collapse of the entire Western banking system,” Billington said.

“And the view from London and Washington and New York is we have to go to war, we cannot allow this BRICS alliance between Russia, China, India, South Africa and most of Latin America creating new financial institutions to take away our ability to loot the resources in the developing sector,” Billington noted.

IS the world going mad? Military posturing is quietly reaching new extremes in Europe, the Mediterranean and the South China Sea. And the provocative bluster has just reached new heights.

The source was anonymous. But the mouthpiece has a measure of credibility. High profile military analyst and former US Naval War College lecturer John Schindler tweeted last week: “Said a senior NATO (non-US) GOFO to me today: ‘We’ll probably be at war this summer. If we’re lucky it won’t be nuclear.’ Let that sink in.”

For many years, Argentina has been under direct attack from the combined forces of global Zionist organizations and lobbies, Israel, the US and the UK, centered on the two deadly terror attacks perpetrated on Argentine soil against the Israeli Embassy and the AMIA/DAIA Jewish Mutual Center buildings located in downtown Buenos Aires.

Global Zionism exerted enormous pressure on successive Argentine governments to ensure the country falsely accuses Iran of masterminding these two attacks using Hezbollah and Hamas as proxies.

The mysterious suicide/assassination of Public Prosecutor Alberto Nisman last January, however, is fast unmasking the Truth: that both attacks were probably Israeli false flag operations.

First, we must learn the facts and face the truth that the U.S. is the biggest war maker in the world.

Second, we must commit ourselves and organize others to a true revolution of values and confront the corporations and politicians who continue to push our nation into war and inflate the military budget with the hot air of permanent fear mongering.

Third, we must admit what our country has been doing wrong, and we must make amends for the violence that the U.S. has waged on countries all over our world.

When the workers of Donnelley arrived at the plant on August 11, 2014 they found a note at the gates explaining that the company was shutting down its operations in the country and that it “regretted the inconvenience.”

This has become a fairly familiar scene. A company shuts down its plant, in order to move operations abroad and take advantage of a cheaper and more docile labor force. Under capitalism, the capitalists are free to relocate their businesses when they are no longer profitable, even if this means leaving 400 families in the streets. The workers, on the other hand, are only free to choose by whom they will be exploited.

Faced with this desperate situation, the workers’ response might have been resignation, but this was not the case. The workers decided to open the gates of the factory, occupy the plant, and restart production.

It started in April with a rash of deals between Argentina and Russia during President Cristina Kirchner’s visit to Moscow.

And it continues with a $53 billion investment bang as Chinese Premier Li Keqiang visits Brazil during the first stop of yet another South American commercial offensive – complete with a sweet metaphor: Li riding on a made in China subway train that will ply a new metro line in Rio de Janeiro ahead of the 2016 Olympics.

When Avatar, a masterpiece written and produced by James Cameron, came out, I was already living in Peru and for the first time I saw it in the bus during my honeymoon heading north to visit a dear friend of mine in the central Andes. But a long bus ride going on a mountain road made the viewing someone difficult.

I thought to watch it again when I got home. Watching the movie upon my return was more than simply enjoying the special effects. It was quite sad since a painful reality was reflected in the science fiction film. The fictional wildlife on Pandora reminded me of real life in the Amazon basin, a unique eco-system and the richest region on Earth in terms of biodiversity.

What do Israeli imperialism in the Middle East, Zionist lobby groups and Wall Street vulture capitalism in Argentina have in common? They are all part of a vast conspiracy to demonize Iran, enrich plutocratic poobahs, bring down the Argentine government and gain control of the South American country’s land and natural resources. The truth was revealed on April 18 by Jorge Elbaum in Pagina 12, a Buenos Aires newspaper.

Chinese premier Li Keqiang lifted the wraps Tuesday on a multibillion-dollar series of trade and investment deals with Brazil, as Beijing looks to invest $50bn in South America’s largest economy.

The news unveiled on the Chinese official visit is a huge boon for Brazil as it endures a fifth straight year of low growth after a period of rapid expansion fueled by an Asian demand for commodities that has since slowed.

Last Friday afternoon in Mexico City, I was waiting for a friend, a dedicated human and civil rights activist for many years in Mexico. He was going to tell me about his work on an initiative recently launched to call for a citizen’s convention to draft a new constitution for Mexico. This initiative, the “Constituyente Ciudadana Popular,” is spearheaded by Bishop of Saltillo Raul Vera, a leader of the Mexican Catholic Church.

Peruvian judicial authorities have ordered the reopening and expansion of a criminal probe into the mass forced sterilization of an estimated 350,000 women and 25,000 men during the 1990s.

A Peruvian public prosecutor reopened an investigation on Thursday into former President Alberto Fujimori’s possible role in the forced sterilization of thousands of Peru’s indigenous people during the ‘90s.

On March 29, Nueva Trinidad became the third municipality in El Salvador to officially declare itself a "territory free of mining" through a historic community consultation.

Canadian mining companies have had a brutal presence in El Salvador. Communities in the departments of Chalatenango and Cabañas have organized to prevent the entry of mining corporations into the municipalities.

OceanaGold, which purchased the Vancouver-based Pacific Rim Mining in 2013, is suing El Salvador—the most water-stressed country in the region—for an amount equivalent to 5 percent of its gross domestic product for refusing to grant it a permit to put a gold mine into operation.

Cluster munitions are a particularly hideous weapon of war, designed primarily to kill people indiscriminately, both immediately and for years after they have been dispersed. Anti-personnel cluster munitions, whether delivered by air or artillery, burst in mid-air, spreading submunitions or bomblets that can remain lethal for years, as they have, for examples, in Viet-Nam, the Falklands, Chechnya, Croatia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Georgia, Libya, Syria, and now Yemen.

One of the strategies of war criminal Henry Kissinger's infamous 1974 National Security Study Memorandum 200 included, “Can technological innovations or development reduce growth or ameliorate its effects?”

Perhaps that’s why a group of people decided to forcibly sterilize groups of Mexican children against their will and parents wishes in December 1974 with a novel anti-fertility vaccine...

Operation Condor was an infamous secret alliance between South American dictatorships in the mid and late 1970s – a Southern Cone rendition and repression program – formed to track down and eliminate enemies of their military regimes. The Condor trial charges 25 high-ranking officers, originally including former Argentine presidents Jorge Videla (deceased) and Reynaldo Bignone (aged 87), with conspiracy to “kidnap, disappear, torture and kill” 171 opponents of the regimes that dominated the Southern Cone in the 1970s and 1980s. Among the victims were approximately 80 Uruguayans, 50 Argentines, 20 Chileans and a dozen others from Paraguay, Bolivia, Peru and Ecuador who were targeted by Condor operatives.

University dean who called for sanctions against Dr Medardo Avila Vazquez reported to have signed deal with Monsanto

The National University of Cordoba, Argentina has dropped the administrative sanctions it had planned against a doctor who conducted cancer research in the town of Monte Maiz in the face of huge popular and scientific support for his work.

Dr Medardo Avila Vazquez and his team conducted a survey that found that the incidence of cancer in Monte Maiz was three times the provincial and national average, correlating with exposure to pesticides in the area. The main crops grown are GM soy and maize.

The administrative sanctions against Dr Vazquez were requested by Juan Marcelo Conrero, the dean of the Faculty of Agriculture.

27 year-old Maita Camico, a Yanomami of Venezuela’s Amazonas state, was beaten to death on Saturday afternoon after being taken into police custody for “disturbing public order,” according to official reports. The Public Prosecutor's office has indicted four policemen for their part in the murder.

It is no coincidence that the most violent assaults and invasions by the Euro-American powers have taken place against the poorest countries in each region of the world. In the Western hemisphere, the Euro-US regimes have repeatedly invaded the absolutely poorest country, Haiti, overthrowing the popularly elected Aristide government, decimating the population via a cholera epidemic spread by UN mercenary ‘peace-keepers’, killing tens of thousands of poor Haitians and rounding up thousands of protestors. The occupation continues. Honduras, the second poorest country in the region, experienced a US-backed coup d’état deposed their recently elected president and imposed a terrorist puppet regime, which regularly assassinates dissidents and landless rural workers. Peasants are dispossessed; the economy and society are in shambles with tens of thousands of Hondurans (especially children) fleeing the violence.

Nine top Brazilian executives from major construction and engineering corporations have left jail for home confinement as investigation continues into their alleged roles in a bribery scandal involving the country’s state-owned oil giant Petrobras.

Over 200 striking teachers were injured in Brazil’s southern city of Curitiba Wednesday after militarized police used rubber bullets, tear gas, stun grenades, pepper spray and batons to prevent them from entering the Paraná state house to protest against a proposed attack on their pension rights.

Gold surged above $1,200 an ounce Monday in its best day since January, amid market intrigue surrounding a deal between Venezuela and Citigroup to swap $1 billion in cash for part of the country's gold reserves.

The swap, reported last week, provides cash to President Nicolas Maduro's socialist government as the country reels from a steep drop in oil revenue. Reuters reported Friday that the Venezuelan central bank was expected to have provided 1.4 million ounces of gold in exchange for the cash, and the country would have to pay interest on the funds.

"He had to pawn their gold. That's what they've done. They can buy it back. They have rights of first refusal," said Dennis Gartman, publisher of The Gartman Letter. "They went to the biggest pawnbroker of gold—Citibank."

Israeli attempted to sidetrack the Argentine investigation, by involving some of its powerful Wall Street assets and influential pro-Israel lobbies (the Anti-Defamation League, AIPAC among others). Their purpose was to fabricate ‘evidence’ in order to implicate Iran in the crime and to manipulate their influential assets in Argentina, especially in this case, chief prosecutor Nisman and many of the leaders of DAIA, to accuse the Argentine government of complicity in an ‘Iranian cover-up’.

A recent article by Jorge Elbaum, the former executive director of DAIA (Delegation for Argentine Jewish Associations), the principle Argentine Jewish umbrella groups, published in the Buenos Aires daily Pagina 12, provides a detailed account of the damaging links between the State of Israel, US Wall Street speculators, and local Argentine Zionists in government and out. Elbaum describes how their efforts have been specifically directed toward destabilizing the incumbent center-left government of President Cristina Fernandez, while securing exorbitant profits for a Zionist Wall Street speculator, Paul Singer of Elliott Management as well as undermining a joint Iranian-Argentine investigation of the 1994 terrorist bombing of the Jewish Community Center in Buenos Aires.

Sixteen people killed in cold blood by the Mexican Federal Police; unarmed people of an auto-defense movement – in January 2015; just discovered by a team of investigative journalists.

Mexicans well remember the mass killing of 43 Ayotzinapa students of last September, unarmed students of a college that caters to the rural poor, who were protesting the government’s education reform which would make school unaffordable for the poor. Their killing was provoked by the police in connivance with drug cartels.

They train armies and police in their 'client' states to assure oppression whenever there is a chance that people may claim their civil rights. This is what empire does.

In Latin America, Eduardo Galeano was revered as a giant of letters, as a symbol of rebellion, of revolution, and of the fight for justice.

“Utopia is on the horizon,” Galeano once wrote. “I move two steps closer; it moves two steps further away. I walk another ten steps and the horizon runs ten steps further away. As much as I may walk, I’ll never reach it. So what’s the point of utopia? The point is this: to keep walking.”

Galeano told me that he was in love with two ladies, both splendid, both fragile, both tremendously desirable. One was called Utopia, the other, Reality.

Both are dangerous to the masters of the world, to Empire, because one gathers dreams, including dreams for a better world, while the other one bravely tells the truth.

This aerial footage of the Amazon forest throughout the region of Marde de Dios, Peru, will likely leave you speechless. It shows the expansiveness and the devastation caused by deforestation and mining, much of which has occurred in this particular region since 2010. Please share and show your support for efforts such as Community Carbon Trees in Costa Rica that protect and plant trees in regions close to the equator. Sponsor a tree today.

EAEU and Mercosur are going to sign a Memorandum of Cooperation; its approval is near completion, President Putin said Thursday at a press-conference after talks with Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirshener.
"We value the cooperation between regional integration organizations - the Eurasian Economic Union and the South American Common Market - Mercosur. The approval of the corresponding memorandum is at its final stage," he said.
Putin said that over the past 10 years the volume of bilateral trade between Russia and Argentina grew 3.5 fold, but last year it fell by 10.8%. "We discussed with the President of Argentina the way we could return the trade between on the path of sustainable growth, to increase the counter-flow of investments," Putin said.
Mercosur is a sub-regional bloc, established in 1991, which comprises Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay and Venezuela. The EAEU members are currently Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Armenia.

In 2009, just a year before Sebastián Piñera became president of Chile, Michelle Bachelet approved the training of 211 Chilean recruits at the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC), formerly known as the School of the Americas (SOA).

Between 1999 and 2010, Chilean governments sent a total of 1,205 recruits to the school, with Bachelet remaining at the helm of cooperation with the U.S.-based institute that has graduated scores of alumni involved in human rights violations under Chile’s dictatorship era from 1973 to 1990.

Despite the macabre reality inflicted upon Chileans during Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship, the Concertación governments of the center-left, allegedly embarking upon a democratic future for Chile, retained ties with the school that produced torturers such as Miguel Krassnoff Martchenko, who, according to torture survivors, never concealed his identity while subjecting his victims to brutality.

The inclusion of RT’s Spanish channel into the Argentinian state TV network illustrates the global demand for different points of view, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, Argentina’s president, said on her visit to the Russian capital.

"In fact, we are very grateful to RT, because people in different countries need a more complete coverage of what is happening around the globe – not just a subjective point of view on events in a particular region, which is being imposed on us,” Fernandez de Kirchner mentioned during her speech at the Russian-Argentine Business Forum in Moscow.